Matrix smobs in guile

[Klaus Schilling <Klaus.Schilling@home.ivm.de>]

Alex Stark writes:
 > 
 > Question: is there a standard smob for matrices?
 > 
 > Motivation:
 > 1) Matrices are a vital part of much numerical computation;
 > 2) In numerical apps which indicates the use of a smob which is a
 > collection of matrices, a matrix building block would be handy;

Chris Lee recently wrote a package providing matrice support for guile,
it is based on BLAS and LAPACK. He also tried to use Meschach for that.
Maybe it is lying around on the developper's site.

 > 2) It's useful to let guile do most of the work such as thru uniform
 > arrays;
 > 3) The uniform array is not esp convenient from C;
Newest snapshots contain special support for vectors of floats. Maybe 
Matrices can be built in the same way as vectors of vectors.

 > 4) Why not define a smob which record which contains a uniform array
 > with some other information, such as the type and dimensions?
 > 
 > Supplementary issues:  When transferring data to and from octave, what
 > structure is passed?  What about plotting with gnuplot as one can in
 > Octave?

There are attempts to replace octave/matlab control language with scheme.
Especially M.Vollmer and M.Galassi are interested in that.

Klaus Schilling